The Labyrinthine Library - December 2022

Being the Ongoing Adventures of a Librarian Attempting to Tame a Feral Magical Library

Hello! Ivarlis the Librarian here. No exciting adventures from me this month—I’ve spent all my time getting the Library ready for our upcoming Summerlight Festival. Fireworks, putting up cut-glass decorations (or cellophane for the children), and booking travel tickets to visit the mountain shrines. In your world, the holiday festival appears to involve getting snowed on and venerating old men wearing red. I am tempted to try one of those striped candy canes if I can figure out the right dimensional portal...

Anyway, let's go through the papers on my desk. There's a blood-stained bundle of papers that must be the next chapter of Vex's serial, a beautifully packaged box of promotions, another of Mr Skycastle's articles and—what's this deranged, tea-stained postcard? Is it an...

Author Note

Hello! Kell here. I'm deep in work on the next Lukie book, which will be out next year. 

This newsletter has lore about revenants from the Vestiges of Magic setting, who are people trapped between life and death because of unfulfilled ambitions.

What would I regret? I’ve never finished playing Final Fantasy XV, and XVI is out next year.(I am the world’s slowest video game player, and have a huge backlog to tackle.) This year, I completed a few detective adventure games; my favourite being Somnium Files 2. It’s set in near-future Tokyo, where the detective has to solve the mystery of the ‘New Cyclops’ serial killings. It involves trips to dream worlds and convoluted puzzles. (I’d recommend starting with the first game in the series if this sounds interesting to you at all…)

And reading wise, currently binge-reading Craig Schaefer’s Daniel Faust series. It’s off to a good start so far.

Anything you’d recommend in the fantasy/mystery genre?

Reflections on the Anniversary of My Descent: Part Six

Vex is after revenge on the gang that murdered her boyfriend. To do that, she's made a pact with a demon to become a supernatural agent of vengeance.

Two killers are down, and there's one to go.

But before she can find the cult behind everything, she has to defeat a monster hunter and escape the Netherworld...

Grab your back issues here:

Lore Corner: Revenants

Revenants are mortals who have died and fallen into the gloomy Underworld. Tenebra is a chill realm of memories and regrets, and one way to escape it is for a fallen shade to make a pact with a powerful ghost lord for their undead vestige…

Becoming a Revenant

First, you die.

Maybe you expired violently, someone beating you across the head with a steel pipe until your skull cracked. Perhaps you passed suddenly because of a heart attack, or a foolish accident.

You’re burdened with regret. There’s something you had to do, and failed. You need to go back, to take care of things. Only you’re trapped in the Underworld, hunted by hungry shades.

You’ll never escape on your own. Tenebra is too vast. You’re prey for too many.

The only option is patronage.

The rulers of Tenebra are the ghost lords; spirits so powerful they build entire cityscapes from their memories and regrets, and wall out the ravening terrors of the Underworld.

You arrive before a ghost lord’s palace, wounded and chased by shadows.

If you are fortunate, you’ll strike a bargain and return to the living world as an undead revenant…

What Revenants Do

Revenants serve the shadows. They are the intermediaries between the worlds of the living and the dead. Their patrons hunger for the things they could not have in life, and the revenants serve that urge. Some seek out sensualist delights, while others look for lost secrets.

Revenants need to consume the souls of mortals to sustain their existence. A revenant can choose to either drink a person’s soul entirely, leaving an empty husk, or only remove certain memories.

The Shelves

Want more revenants? Get Final Night! Now available in hard, ethereal and phonographic, er, audio versions!

Promotions

Paranormal in the City

(Free)